Thursday, March 10, 2016

Spring has been flirting with us—snow falls in thick inches,
melts, then falls again. But I think that this time Spring is here to say. All
the birds arrived at once this week. I stepped outside to see my Littlest One
off at the bus stop, and I stepped into a cacophony of birdsong. Robin, blue
jay, red-winged blackbird—I saw them all during my walk. Snowmelt rushes along
the edges of streets into the gutters. The neighbor kids are running around in
short sleeves. And with the change of seasons there’s an odd, unsettled,
restless energy. For me, there’s a feeling of, What's next?

I wrote what I thought was the best story I’ve ever written
this past December. Since then, I’ve written nothing that I’ve really liked. I
started and failed two stories. Wrote one that I think is only okay. I feel in
transition myself. I want to write something new, but what?

I read a novel last week. Binged on short fiction. I keep
hoping that reading enough good work will spark something in me, inspire
something new. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m trying to keep a record of the
good things I’ve read. And I’ve been reading stories so wonderful, so
awe-inspiring, that I do want to share them here for whoever might stumble upon
this blog:

A deceptively quiet, foreboding story of hard choices and
what we are willing to give up for our lives. The next to last paragraph haunts
me (and I agree with it). This is one of those ideas that I wish I’d written
myself—and Ashton handles it beautifully.

This story has
perhaps the most throat-grabbing opening I’ve ever seen.

“There was
nothing phoenix-like in my sister’s immolation. Just the scent of charred skin,
unbearable heat, the inharmonious sound of her last, grief-raw scream as she
evaporated, leaving glass footprints seared into the desert sand.”

Wong’s writing
is intense, visceral, and shattering. Her prose is so powerfully visceral, in
fact, that it wasn’t until a second read that I saw under the gut-punching
prose to how subtly crafted this piece actually is; the story feels like a
shriek of devastation, but it’s not undisciplined at all. In fact, it’s very
carefully laid out, and certain clues to the plot carefully planted. And yes,
you will want to reread this one. Absolutely stunning.

Very strange,
dream-like imagery: a girl born from a lotus, who speaks in enigmatic
prophecies and aphorisms; a gardener who steals shadows when he’s not tending
to a garden of girl-flowers. A gorgeous, dark and magical fairy tale of images
rich and strange.

And sometimes you want wonder that lifts your heart but
doesn’t tear it to pieces. This story by Lemberg might just be that. Two
artists—one a glassmaker in the desert, the other a jeweler in the snowy north—exchange
letters of admiration for one another’s work. They begin sending samples of glasswork
and jewels to one another. And over time, they fall in love. The prose is itself
jeweled, dazzling with descriptions of the magical works that the two artists
exchange.

This came out in 2015, but I only recently read it after
seeing it on a “Best of” list. I’m glad I did. On a distant world, a colonist
is infected by an alien parasite. The results of this infection are not what
you might expect. This story unfolds with a foreboding, inexorable sense of
doom… and yet, the foreknown doom is also beautiful and happy and full of love?
In a twisted way. This is a thought-provoking, compelling story of family,
identity, and autonomy.

This came out in July of 2015 and I read it last summer. But
since I’m making a list of great reads here, I wanted to add this, too. This is
an absolutely beautiful, devastating, complex, intricately layered novelette that
I think didn’t get nearly the attention it deserved. It’s an alternate-history future-space
story/steampunk tale of a Jewish diaspora to the stars; it’s a murder mystery;
it’s a story of loss and trauma and horror and the weight of history; it’s a story that asks what it means to be
human, to have a soul. You should read it.